The Green Spirituality of Universal Humanism

Date: July 16, 2011
The Green Spirituality of universal humanism
For us Green signifies Life. It is the colour of the Life Force. It is the mid-range colour in our spectrum, with red at the lower end and blue at the higher end. Red is the physical-sexual and  blue is the contemplative-intuitive. There’s Green, right in the middle, central to both ends and that is the position of Man, the place of Man emboldened with the vitality of the Life Force.

To enhance or deepen or heighten that Green Force of Life it is proposed by the universal humanists that we get our ordinary life sorted out. We have to achieve a personal and ‘internal’ coherence where what we are is a function of our harmonised thoughts, feelings and actions. Meaning, practically, that we are doing what we deeply want to be doing and we feel very good about that and a sense of meaningfulness permeates our life.

Immediately there is a caution - the systems and societies we are living under are not intended to allow us to be thus free. Because that is precisely what meaningfulness feels like, a sense of freedom. Free of fears of future, free of any dark echo from the past, free of any blocks in the present - of course we all have the common problems - we could always do with an extra few dollars, but these don’t stop us!

Today’s systems are born of an industrial age and just when humanity was emerging from the European Dark Ages, and just as the European Renaissance was laying its searching fingers upon those early societies, a flip occurred as the sciences of astrology took the course of leading into astronomy, and alchemy  went into metallurgy and chemistry, numerology became mathematics, and all that can be seen as good - and indeed it is good - however, important issues were cast aside and materialism came to the fore. The innate spirituality of Man was neglected and indeed abandoned. Materialistic and competitive societies were the result. Mechanical Man replaced ‘natural’ Man.

All that which was allied to the best features in Man, that which makes the human being, a sense of place within a beautiful living world of fellow creatures, an innate sense of a being without limit - not even limited by a supposed personal death - the possibility of achieving love, on the level of this life with a couple and on the cosmic-universal  level with what’s variably termed the Mother, the Creator, the Great Tao, The Unborn...

It is therefore worthwhile to regain what was taken away by others, one’s spirituality. To wake up from the illusion imposed by a consumer oriented society’s collective consciousness and see the real behind the slight, the facade.

This happened to Buddha when he came to realisation. That was a transforming experience as was the gradual dawning of Jesus as he took up ‘his Father’s work’. This was so with all the saints and holy men only that their seeing was through the looking glass of their particular culture and interpreted by us under terms likely foreign to their terms and are thus so fraught with error.

This is why we have to see the real for ourselves. We have to clarify the senses, the emotions, the thinking process, by looking at the personal history, the present situation, and thereby open up the future. This is the Second Coming. This is being reborn.

Tony Henderson               email: tonyhen@humanist.org.hk              Phone: 29840094